ALEUTIAN. - Archipelago of about 150 islands (of which 12 are major) and rocks, all mountainous and volcanic (with dormant and active cones), divided into 5 groups (Fox Islands, Four Mountains, Andreanof, Rat, Near), west of Alaska, on which they depend administratively. The A. cover a total of 37-8,000 sq km, and have about 1,200 inhabitants (once, it seems, more than 25,000), almost all indigenous, by language and culture akin to the neighboring Eskimos. At the time of their first contacts the Russians called them Aleuts; their own name is Unangan.
Important for fishing (cod, herring, salmon) and hunting (seals, whales, sea lions), and with modern fox farms (Fox Islands), the A. enjoy a strategic position of the first order; the North Americans have erected two large naval bases there at Dutch Harbor near Unalaska Island (Fox) and on the island of Kiska (Rat).
The most important inhabited center is Unalaska (230 inhabitants) on the island of the same name. Small settlements are found in the eastern group of the Fox Islands (Unimak, Unalaska, Akutan and Umnak); in all the rest of the archipelago the inhabited islands are Atka (Andreanof) and Attu (Near).
The A. as a mission territory belong to the Apostolic Vicariate of Alaska (v.).
Bibliography7 worksM. L. Turner, Contributions to the Natural History of Alaska, Washington 1886; W. Jochelson, Archaeological investigations in the Aleutian I
BIBL.: M. L. Turner, Contributions to the Natural History of Alaska, Washington 1886; W. Jochelson, Archaeological investigations in the Aleutian Islands, Washington 1925; E. Hulten, Aleutisha forna. En geografisk och naturhistorisk översikt, in Svensk Geografisk Arkbok, Lund 1933, pp. 7-30; W. Jochelson, History, Ethnology and Anthropology of the Aleut, Washington 1933; I. W. Hutchinson, Stepping stones from Alaska to Asia, 1937; R. Bissutti, Le razze e i popoli della Terra, III, Torino, 1941, pp. 277 ff.; H.B. Collins - A.H. Clark - W.H. Walter, The Aleutian Islands: their people and natural history, Washington 1945.
Caraci, Giuseppe. “Aleutine.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. I, col. 822. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1948. https://azioneromana.com/article/aleutine.
MLA
Caraci, Giuseppe. “Aleutine.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. I, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1948, col. 822. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/aleutine.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec1_aleutine,
author = {Caraci, Giuseppe},
title = {Aleutine},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {I},
pages = {822},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1948},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/aleutine}
}
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